Oyster collection at Apalachicola Bay, Florida. (Photo: AP/MW)
Apalachicola oyster industry undergoes difficulties after Hurricane Michael
UNITED STATES
Tuesday, October 23, 2018, 02:20 (GMT + 9)
The oyster industry in Apalachicola Bay, Florida, is undergoing the negative impact of the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.
The oysters of this zone are popular because of their saltiness but when the hurricane came through, the rainfall added a lot of fresh water, which can affect the flavour of the resource. So even if it is possible to harvest oysters in the area, they may not have the same salty flavour that customers are used to, CBS42 reported.
Fish supplies, in particular grouper, are also a problem, since the hurricane made the business even more than the red tide, which killed a lot of fish off the coast of Florida.
Apalachicola oystermen are used to tragedy, since in the past decade, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, over-harvesting and a battle for fresh water with up-the-stream Atlanta — dubbed the "water wars" — have reduced the once-booming oyster industry to a shell of its former self.
According to Pensacola News Journal, many felt the oysters would one day come back if given proper time, and millions of dollars have been spent rebuilding the bay in the past three years.
Photo: The Apalachicola River watershed. Apalachicola, known as the “Oyster Republic” is a charming town on the Panhandle, where the majority of oysters are harvested making it one of the state's most authentic getaways.
After this latest storm, however, optimism for the bivalve’s return to prominence is in short supply among current and former oystermen, even if hope is not.
Apalachicola, considered the oyster capital of the world, boasts a bay that is paradise for oysters and oystermen alike, protected by barrier islands, fed by the freshwater Apalachicola River, and assisted by regulations that require oystermen to pinch oysters from the sand with tongs and keep nothing smaller than 3 inches.
Oysters have always been the pearl of the town, a keystone of the local economy and the Apalachicola Bay estuary, which needs oysters as much as the oysters need it.
At the height of the bay’s productivity, a single boat could pull 4,000 pounds of oysters from the sandbars daily, and the town of 2,300 produced 90 per cent of Florida’s oysters and 10 per cent of the nation’s.
Now, oystermen from the are state that after the terrible storm if they are lucky they will be able to pull 30-40 pounds a day.
The sector considers that the bay now has more to overcome than a hurricane, since the oyster industry was dead before the storm due to lack of freshwater or the use of dispersants to clean the spill for damaging the ecosystem, but overfishing is equally mentioned and potentially related.
Many also blame the city of Atlanta for siphoning off too much water from the Chattahoochee River, which feeds freshwater to the Apalachicola. As freshwater has declined, many oysterman have pulled up empty shells, cracked open by drill conchs previously kept at bay by the salinity balance that also gave the oyster its treasured taste.
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